


another travelling song

by littlelostsputnik, thewinterapostate



Series: along the road [2]
Category: Firefly, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefly Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:07:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23164471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlelostsputnik/pseuds/littlelostsputnik, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewinterapostate/pseuds/thewinterapostate
Summary: Leia Organa (Captain of the Swan class transport ship 'The Alderaan') and her crew of misfits and strays have one job - to keep flying. The presence of an unlikely stowaway brings a new set of complications - especially for the Alderaan's pilot, who's never met anybody quite like Finn before.
Relationships: Poe Dameron & Leia Organa, Poe Dameron/Finn, background Amilyn Holdo/Leia Organa
Series: along the road [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1491572
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12





	another travelling song

**Author's Note:**

> After the Earth was used up, we found a new solar system and hundreds of new Earths were terraformed and colonized. The central planets formed the Alliance and decided all the planets had to join under their rule. There was some disagreement on that point. After the War, many of the Independents who had fought and lost drifted to the edges of the system, far from Alliance control. Out here, people struggled to get by with the most basic technologies; a ship would bring you work, a gun would help you keep it. A captain's goal was simple: find a crew, find a job, keep flying.

Eight-Seven couldn’t remember their landing except for that it had been dark inside the transport ship, save for a peppering of lights he could just glimpse through the oversized windows of the cockpit. One moment there was a hushed silence, the next a volley of gunfire and screams that shook him to his core. 

Violence was hardly new to the group of soldiers, many of them coming from the same background. A childhood rooted in subtle brainwashing, a young adulthood of desensitization techniques proven to turn kids into killers, and finally, over five years experience in active duty. 

Alliance soldiers didn’t balk, didn’t falter or question the actions demanded of them. They just **did**. 

Everything tasted of bile and blood, dark eyes flashing from one surprised face to another while a finger stilled over the trigger of his weapon. The children were the first to be noticed, arms tightening around the legs of parents desperate to shield them from the explosions that cut down flesh and bone with deadly accuracy. Next, the lack of high powered weaponry they had been assured of in their debriefing. 

Outrage could not stop his forward march. Alliance ranks closed around the civilians that had taken to firing off rounds from the few revolvers that had been found in the chaos. For a brief moment, Eight-Seven was foolish enough to think that the end was in sight as gunfire ceased. 

Looking down the barrel of his gun, he could feel the corner of his mouth lift upwards in a small smile, as relief that the seven-year-old before him would be spared washed over him. 

“Oh, you dropped th-”

“Fire!” 

His fingers had closed around the patchwork bunny just as the order was given. Suddenly, the walls of the valley surrounding them were illuminated by the flash of nineteen weapons firing into the gathered crowd with no hesitation. Where his fingertips brushed the earth, blood pooled in the divots and stained dark fingers that had come back up to rest on the gun pressed against his shoulder. 

“I ordered you to fire, private.” The voice in his ear was new to him, a malice read about in history books when describing the ruthlessness of the Browncoats up until their surrender. From out of the corner of his eye, Eight-Seven recognized the face of the rising officer often rumored as the future Director over the Alliance’s military forces. 

His attempts at protest were drowned out beneath the knowledge of what would happen to him should he refuse the direct order. He _wanted_ to stop. Internally screamed at himself even as his hands found their way back by instinct to the areas of metal where oils had smoothed away any manufacturing imperfections. 

It was a screaming that didn’t stop even after the click of the trigger showered him with flecks of dirt and blood. 

Or when the roar of engines forced them into the lower atmosphere. 

Or when he found himself the only one still awake hours after their return.

\-------------------------------------------------------

There wasn’t a plan. He hadn’t had time to plan before he was all action; spilling out into the streets via the first unmonitored door he had found. Eavesdown’s vibrant culture was just beginning to show itself for the new day, as stalls in the nearby market opened and the evening’s criminals were replaced by those in nicer clothes and more prestigious titles. 

Eight-Seven wanted nothing more than to run, to get himself as far away from the imposing building at the edge of where high society ended and the criminal underworld began. While a few hours of time had been bought before his departure would be noticed, he knew that to stay much longer than he absolutely had to would greatly increase the chances of his capture. 

That was once a thought that brought him comfort, but now he found himself unable to stop the sudden panic that made his breath come quick and spiked his pulse. Being found meant reindoctrination, a lengthy prison sentence, or in the more extreme case, death - should they be able to prove his desertion. 

The docks seemed like the most obvious place to go; with a large assortment of ships coming and going at all hours of the day, it would likely be the first place he would be looked for long after he had talked (or bought) his way onto a ship. His big mistake had been being under the assumption that credits spoke loud enough to ignore the state-issued clothing that marked him as a member of the Alliance military. Or, as he’d been informed by no shortage of people today, ‘a gorram purple belly’. 

After the fifth person to say no was followed quickly by the third person to flat out laugh in his face, the only word Eight-Seven could think to describe his situation was hopeless. No one in their right mind would willingly take an Alliance soldier on board without proof of orders, and by now the day was reaching the late morning and he had nothing to show for his efforts. 

There was still time to go back and play his absence off as a mistake. Sure, there would be repercussions, but if he was lucky they would spare him the harsher punishments for returning of his own accord.

“ _Ta ma de_.” The rarely used profanity was whispered under his breath as he took a moment to scan the crowd for anyone who might look desperate. That was what he saw her. Eight-Seven didn’t consider himself an expert at all on the value of ships, but even to his uneducated eye he knew that the one before him was hardly worth the credits it cost to dock her for more than a full day. 

He had every intention of asking permission before boarding and was even willing to offer a large chunk of the few credits he had to his name in payment to be taken anywhere but here. 

“Excuse me?” His voice carried up the extended ramp, echoing throughout the empty cargo hold. and received no response that any life was on board. “Hey! I was wondering if I could trouble you for a ride?” Again, there was no response - and his feet carried him up into the belly of the ship where he was greeted by no one, hostile or welcoming. 

_They’ll never know_ . The assurance fed over and over to himself as his years of inspecting shipments brought him face to face with one of the many smuggler holds cut into the body of the probable deathtrap ship . _I’ll be able to explain to them once we're off-planet._ He murmured the false promises under his breath as he dropped into the small space and pulled the heavy cover back into place just as the sound of bickering voices met his ears. 

_They’ll understand once I explain._

\----------------------------------------------------------------------

Leia pinched the bridge of her nose and huffed out a long sigh. She thought she could feel a new worry line developing, and it just wasn't right to have as many wrinkles as she did at her age.

“Start again, right from the beginning. And please, enlighten me how this wasn't your rutting fault.”

She felt as though she was speaking to children, but the three in front of her, eyes downcast and with a sheepish set to their shoulders were not children. They were her fully grown first mate, security officer and pilot.

Luke had his head tilted back to slow the flow of blood from his busted nose, as Amilyn ran her fingers gently over it, trying to feel for a break. Rey had one eye puffing up already – it'd be swollen shut before the day was over. Poe was holding himself gingerly, one arm curled around his narrow middle, and the knuckles on his left hand were bruised, swollen and scraped. Their battered appearance, teamed with their abashed and hangdog faces made them look more like a group of kids being scolded after a playground scrap than her supposedly accomplished crew.

Luke spat a mouthful of blood to the deck as Amilyn moved to press a cold compress to Rey's eye.

“Look sis...Captain, I'm not saying it wasn't our fault, I'm just saying that we didn't start it.” His voice was clogged and nasal and Leia could hear the whistling quality to his breathing that probably meant his nose was broken. The doc would have to set it later, but it'd been broken enough times now that it wasn't ever going to sit straight again. “Dee-Jay was cheating.”

She tried not to sigh. She really did. “And there wasn't anyway to settle that without resorting to a gorram bar-room brawl? Who threw the first punch?”

She didn't know why she even bothered to ask. Even if past experience didn't make it abundantly clear, the way that Poe was studiously looking anywhere but at her and unconsciously flexing his bruised hand sure as hell did. The kid could start a fight in an empty room.

“At least we still got our credits though. That's something right?” How Rey could sound so cheerful with half her face looking like tenderised meat, Leia would never know.

She supposed she should have expected this though. Back planet side on Persephone for the first time in weeks, it wasn't at all surprising that her crew needed this release. They'd been up in the black for far too long. She was even more surprised that they hadn't started throwing punches at each other over plates of unflavoured protein, though it'd been a close call.

“Yes, Rey, we do have our credits. Unfortunately, we also have a negotiator who looks like he's gone ten rounds with a reaver, a pilot who can't move one hand and a bodyguard who can't see out of one eye.” She counted the strikes off on the fingers of one hand, the shoulders of her crew sinking lower with each one. “We also have another bar, of an already dwindling list, that we can't go to. Another ally who's shit list we're on. And, oh yeah, still no rutting work.”

Poe opened his mouth to interject, a pissy expression on his face, and Leia put her hand up to stop him before she could get angrier. “Stop. Don't you say one gorram word. You've already pissed me off enough for one day and I'm likely to add to that mighty colourful collection of bruises you've no doubt got.”

Any further mutiny from her pilot was halted as Rose walked up the gangway. The mechanic was walking with a jaunty step that meant she had managed to find whatever parts she needed at a good price. Rose whistled as she took in her battered and bloody crew mates.

“Someone cheat at mahjong again?” They really were that predictable.

“Bui zui!” All five sets of eyes in the hold turned to look at Leia as she spat out the command.

Rubbing at her suddenly pounding head, she waved a hand to dismiss them. “I don't wanna hear anything else. Just go make yourselves useful, if you're capable of that. Dinner ain't gonna cook itself.”

With a string of muttered, 'Yes Cap'ns', the crew filtered out of the hold, except for Amilyn. As Leia sat down heavily on an empty crate, she took a seat next to her. The Companion had stayed quiet throughout the arguments but she spoke now, an unusually serious expression on her face.

“We don't find any work or passengers soon and we're humped, right?”

Leia huffed out a peal of humourless laughter.

“Yeah, Holdo. We're humped.”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Poe limped up to the cockpit, just about managing to hold back a groan each time he jostled his protesting ribs. Though there were less than ten rungs on the ladder up from the gangway, it never seemed further or more daunting than when he’d been on the wrong side of a bar brawl. The little voice in the back of his head that sounded so very much like Captain Organa (so much so, that he had to risk a look over his shoulder just to check she hadn’t decided to be his floating conscience) told him that his discomfort was his own fault. He heaved himself up the ladder, finally letting out the yelp of pain that had been bubbling up since they’d left the bar, and firmly told the voice to shut the hell up.

Though he had his own quarters on the Alderaan (a grandiose name for a rough around the edges, repurposed Swan class transport, but Leia had always had a touch of the grandiose about her), Poe spent so much time in the cockpit that his bunk was fairly sparse and sterile. Something about sleeping in a windowless metal box made him feel hinky and shivery down to his bones. More often than not, he slept in the hammock that he’d installed up here - having the vast expanse of space, or the hectic buzzing of port around him made it easier to drift off.

He pulled off his battered leather jacket, hanging it over the back of his pilot’s chair, and toed off his boots, kicking them into a corner. Poe clambered up into the hammock, sinking into the nest of canvas and cushions with a grateful groan. He’d barely had a chance to close his eyes when he heard the skittering and chittering that meant he wasn’t alone.

Poe cracked an eyelid open and offered the little orange capuchin monkey that clung to the rope of his hammock a lazy grin.

“Yeah, I know Bee Bee. I’m a dumbass.” The monkey chittered and squeaked as if it was agreeing with the pilot, and his smile widened. “Nah, I don’t think the Captain’s that mad at us. If she’d been there, she would’a been throwing punches too. She’s just worried buddy. We’re flat broke.”

Bee Bee scampered along the edge of the hammock until he was at Poe’s shoulder and nipped at his sweaty curls affectionately. Poe scratched him behind the ears and sat up, digging around in his pocket until he came out with a handful of candied nuts from one of the stalls on the docks that Bee Bee greedily snatched with his little paws and began to eat.

“Yeah, yeah. No rest for the wicked.” Poe maintained a running one sided conversation with the capuchin, though the monkey did add his own commentary at the appropriate points. After half an hour or so’s very necessary lie-down, he painfully extricated himself from the hammock and moved over to his pilot’s chair. The flight console of the ship was meticulously looked after, more so than the mess and the clutter of the rest of the cockpit would suggest. It was thoroughly decorated though - with knick knacks Poe had picked up from the all over the ‘verse, postcards and figurines, and a couple sets of brightly coloured lanterns and string lights. In pride of place in the middle there were two photographs; one of his mother, Shara Bey, in the cockpit of her own fighter ship during the Unification war, looking young and wild in her brown coat, and one of him, his dad and his mom, back on the family farm on Whitefall when he couldn’t have been more than ten.

Poe flicked on the comms and the security system. The fuel levels could be higher, if he was honest, and he didn’t like the way that the auxiliary power to the engine kept flickering in and out, but all things considered it could be worse. Wasn’t like they had the credits to fix anything non-essential right now anyway.

Absently, Poe cast his eyes over the life support. They didn’t have the most up to date system, but it was enough to show the life signs of those on board. It looked like everyone was back. There were seven blinking lights that indicated the crew, and the smaller one that showed Bee Bee (who had now taken his customary position on Poe’s shoulder and was carefully grooming Poe’s rats nest of hair).

Wait...seven life signs? That wasn’t quite right. Between Poe, Leia, Holdo, Rey, Luke and Rose, there should only be six. Poe rolled his eyes. Someone obviously hadn’t kicked out their port-side one night stand yet. He hit the comms button and his voice filtered throughout the ship.

“What’s the plan Captain? I can have us back in the black within half an hour if we’re done here?” It might be a good idea. Dee-Jay was a scumbag, and a known cheat, but he had friends in Eavesdown and it would probably be best to get off planet before there were any reprisals. “Whoever’s got company, they gotta be gone sooner rather than later unless they’re coming to Greenleaf with us.”

There was a pause, and the comms unit on his console crackled. Rose’s voice echoed through the cockpit.

“Nobody here but us Poe, we’re all in the mess. Captain says we’re good to go though.”

It must have been another thing on this _luh suh_ ship that was on the blink too.

Poe sat back in his chair and slid on his headset. He flicked the switches to fire up the engines and the thrusters, checking the levels of the stabilisers and engaging the compression. In the hangar, the bay doors started to rise and clunked shut, shaking the walls of the bottom of the ship. He switched on the Cortex link in the cockpit, connecting a wave through to the Port Authority.

“One two, one two. This is Poe Dameron of the Alderaan requesting clearance to break atmosphere from dock six. Over.” 

The wave connected and a slightly fuzzy video link popped up on the Cortex screen. Seeing the crinkling eyes and careworn face of one of the dock staff he recognised, Poe flicked on his own vid-link and offered the man a wink and a lazy salute.

“Message received, Poe. About gorram time you got this rustbucket off planet. She’s making my docks look untidy.” Yang Davis had been working at the Eavesdown Docks as long as Poe could remember, and they had an easy familiarity between them by now. Though he was a good twenty or so years older than Poe, he was easy enough on the eyes for a middle aged man, and Poe was never one to shy away from some casual flirting.

“Yeah, yeah. You know you’ll miss us when we’re gone. You don’t get customers so pretty as me most of the time, old man, I know that chatting to me is the one little bright spot in your day.”

The man on the screen laughed, and within thirty or so seconds, the tell tale thump of the gravity lock disengaging echoed through the ship as the credit transfer authorised. 

“You’re good to go, Poe, presuming that your go se ship can break atmo without killing you all.” 

“Xiexie! Catch you on the flipside, Yan.” Poe flipped him off (affectionately, of course) and switched off the Cortex link. He pressed the button on the side of his headset to speak through the main ships comms instead. “Okay guys, we’re ready to go. Strap in, we should be back in the black within the next ten minutes.”

Poe had grown up behind the console of the Alderaan - at first sitting on Luke or Han’s knee, eagerly soaking up everything he could about flying, hanging off the men’s every word and action, and then from the age of seventeen onwards, flying solo. Breaking atmosphere in her came to him as easily as breathing. She was an ungainly ship that looked like she’d been cobbled together from the parts of ships that nobody else wanted, but underneath his hands she flew as smoothly as a top of the range pleasure cruiser. There was only the slightest turbulence as they left the atmosphere of Persephone, just enough to rattle the crockery in the mess cupboards, but with a minimum of fuss, the image through the windscreen in front of him changed from the buzz of the docks to the vast emptiness of space. Some people found that yawning nothingness to be unsettling, but to Poe it felt like home; more so than Whitefall ever had.

It took him maybe half an hour or so to plot out their course in the astro-nav. Boros was the destination, as Holdo had an old client there who might be able to hook them up with some work, though they had to make a stop off at Greenleaf to drop some medical supplies that Rose had picked up as a favour to her cousin. Consulting the fuel levels, he marked out a fairly economical route, though he did extend their journey by a couple of days to avoid Paquin. Maybe he was being too cautious, but after the reports of Reavers in their atmosphere a couple months back, he decided that he’d rather be safe than sorry.

Maybe he could have done the job quicker, but taking his time over their journey plan also came with the added benefit of making him too late to help cook the evening meal. Poe was hopeless in the kitchen - as likely to burn water as he was to create something edible - so he usually ended up with some tedious manual chore like peeling or chopping, so if he could find a way of avoiding it all together, the more the better. Once the route was input, he stood to leave, Bee Bee moving from his shoulder to cling to the back of his shirt. Poe winced as those tiny monkey hands tugged at his hair, but he was such a soft touch around his ever present companion that he didn’t bother to chide him.

As he was leaving the cockpit, his eyes once again lingered on the seven life signs blinking on his console. He frowned. Something about it just didn’t sit quite right with him. The Alderaan had plenty in the way of... _idiosyncrasies_ was probably the polite way of putting it, but this had never been one of them before. He and Rose would have to pull out the mainframe later and give it a look over. He kept his fingers crossed that nothing there would need replacing because that would cost credits that they most certainly didn’t have.

Being back in the black should have put him at ease, but all afternoon he was on edge. Back down in the mess with the rest of the crew, he had an unsettling feeling like he was being watched, even though that was impossible. Rose and Luke were in the kitchen, which at least meant that dinner that evening would be edible. Holdo and Rey were playing a game of Go at the table, and he brushed off the offer to play the winner. Leia was sitting at the bar, pretending that she was still angry at them. At some point she must have noticed that Poe, never exactly a wallflower, was strangely quiet, and she raised an eyebrow at him. He offered her a wave and a weak facsimile of his normal rakish smile. Something just felt wrong.

Later, as they sat around the table eating a surprisingly decadent stir fry with a complete absence of reconstituted protein - a rare treat, but the fresh produce they’d picked up planetside wouldn’t last long - he still felt off kilter. Poe pushed his food around his plate more than he ate it. Rey slammed her cup down harder than intended and he physically startled, jumping in his seat. Luke snorted at his twitchiness and he flushed, suddenly finding himself the centre of attention.

“What’s with you today, flyboy? You’ve been squirrelly all afternoon.” Rey nudged him with her shoulder, and there was obviously concern in her gentle teasing.

“Dunno. I’ve just felt pá chūqù since we left Eavesdown. Y’know that feeling, like someone walked over your grave? Like that.” He shrugged his shoulders, but cast an eye around the mess to see if anyone else had the same feeling. Mostly he was met with blank faces.

Luke grinned though. “You been listening to ghost stories again, Poe? I’m not gonna come and check under your bed for monsters this time. You’re too old for that now.”

Poe groaned as Rose leaned forward, obviously eager to hear the story behind that. She was the newest member of the crew, so there were still in-jokes and the like that she hadn’t been privy to yet. He sunk his head down into his hands to hide his embarrassment as Luke started up.

“Wouldn’t sleep without the light on for weeks, would you?” 

“In my defense, I was twelve…” Poe’s voice was muffled by the cradle of his arms.

“Han had to step in to stop Leia tearing Ben a new one for scaring you like that. Told him he wasn’t allowed to tell you any spooky stories anymore, you were too _sensitive_.”

One word was all it took for the joviality in the room to disappear like it had been sucked into a vacuum. As soon as Luke said the name _Ben_ everyone in the room froze. Luke winced, realising his mistake straight away. Leia flinched. It wasn’t an obvious tell - just a tightening of her mouth and a clenching of her jaw - but everyone was looking at her for her reaction. The silence hung awkwardly in the room like a cloud.

It only would have gotten more awkward, if not for Bee Bee. As if sensing the tension in the room, the monkey scampered up Poe’s leg and onto the table, before darting forward and snatching a piece of tomato from Leia’s plate. The Captain frowned, and then laughed, and just like that it felt like all of the air was back in the room. Leia looked between her plate, the monkey, and Poe.

“I think we’ve had words about pets at the dining table, haven’t we, Poe?” She tried to sound stern but there was humour in her voice, and she stroked along Bee Bee’s long tail with something like gratitude in her eyes.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  
  


By midnight, Poe and Bee Bee were the only ones left in the mess. As a pilot, he kept odd hours as it was, always needing to be alert for the sound of the proximity alert and the like. Even if he’d wanted to sleep, he still felt out of sorts. He’d felt better after dinner, but now he was alone, that creeping feeling had come back with force. 

He was in one of the more comfortable chairs, feet propped up on the sideboard. He tried to focus on the book that was in his lap rather than the itch at the back of his brain, to little success. Travelling on a ship like the Alderaan, it was never truly _quiet_ as such, but all the thumps and bumps and creaks were familiar. Until they weren’t.

Poe sat bolt upright as a strange scraping, scratching noise filtered into his consciousness. His hand strayed to his hip before he could help it, and he cursed under his breath at the Captain’s hard and fast rule that all firearms had to be locked away when they were in the black. He cast his eyes around the room but he was seemingly alone, and Bee Bee was slumbering on the rug in front of him so couldn’t be to blame.

“If this is one of you hun dahn’s messing with me, you aren’t half as funny as you think you are!” His voice seemed to echo around the empty room and it sounded a lot more tremulous than he would have liked.

Carefully and quietly, almost holding his breath, he inched towards the kitchen counter, hand groping for one of the sharp prep knives.

Not that it would do much good against a ghost.

Not that he even thought it was a ghost.

Well, he wasn’t ruling it out. Ben’s stories had really done a number on him.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a Firefly AU. Leia is the Captain of a smuggling ship very much like Serenity, with other characters serving as her crew. Leia, Luke and Han were Browncoats in the war of Independence. This takes place around the same time of the Firefly series. There is a prequel - 'you know the way back home' - that is slowly being updated, but it's not necessary to read it first. Kylo Ren is still the bad guy, and this is not Kylo friendly. 
> 
> This fic is monstorously long, and will be updated when I get round to it.
> 
> Chinese translations:
> 
> Ta ma de - Fucking hell  
> Bui zui! - Be quiet!  
> Luh suh - Garbage  
> Xie Xie - Thanks!  
> Pá chūqù - Creeped out  
> Hun dahns - Bastards


End file.
